A "6-pixel" Post

on User interfaces...
I didn't notice when this feature landed on Google Reader, but I like that they added it:

The option to hide the feeds list in Google Reader just got a lot more discoverable. There's now an arrow in the splitter to do that. (before it was just a keyboard shortcut: "U"). This allows you to see more of your feeds when you're reading stuff.

On that note, I remember something I read in Signal vs Noise:

Will Shipley (of Delicious Monster) said:

This is all your app is: a collection of tiny details

As long as you don't forget about the big picture, I couldn't agree more.

(Minor edits on construction and some typographical errors)

The CAPTCHA Thing

CAPTCHA was invented in an effort to fight the war against spamming, and other shady activities that involves bots pretending to be humans. So when this feature was added to blogger's comments, i immediately added it to my blog. I remember getting one or two spam comments before that, so I reasoned that it was perfectly reasonable. Everybody else seemed to have done the same.

But then blogger's captcha started to act up. I haven't really identified the problem, but nowadays when I'm commenting on a blog with CAPTCHA, it's almost always the case that my first attempt to enter the challenge code will fail and I will have to re-enter a new one. It can get really frustrating sometime.

I realized that a CAPTCHA challenge, though trivial to use, (for a human, that is. ;p) poses an irritating usability barrier to a feature that's used very often, such as the blogger comment form. It is perfectly necessary in sign-up pages and other sensitive pages that a user will use once or a few times while using the web service, but beyond that, I think we have to find of a perfect balance between being spam-proof, and being user-friendly. Now in the case of this blog, which is low-traffic, the serious problem of spam is yet to really show up. And frankly I think I can get away without having CAPTCHA in the comments.

So a month ago I removed CAPTCHA from Wandering Geek to make commenting easier and faster. I realize that I'm monitoring my comments anyway (both thru blogger's comments feed, and the comments email notification) so in case any spam gets through, I can easily delete it. Honestly, if it makes things easier for readers, I don't mind doing that.

This is a lesson in designing a user interface: sometimes we think too much about solving an "expected" problem that in doing so we alienate the very people that we are designing the user interface for.

A Close Encounter With Someone from The Mothership

HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is a field that has fascinated me from the day I learned of its existence, or perhaps more accurately, from the day I felt it's importance, that is, when I saw the elegance in Apple's user interfaces.

Apple surely did not invent this field, but you would be hard-pressed to disagree that it is in this field that Apple draws its strength (besides Steve Jobs' RDF) and the magic that powers its computer products, software applications, iPods and soon, the iPhone.

What would excite the HCI geek in me more than anything else is to meet (lest hear speak) an Apple User Interface designer: someone from the mothership. And yesterday, i had the chance to listen first hand to this someone.

It all started with Angel's email inviting me (and nikki) to a lecture on HCI. A hurried and excited scan of the email lead me to the person who will be giving the lecture: Mr. Jose Arcellana - a senior manager of user experience at Oracle Corp who has also worked for 11 years in Apple (faints...). And as if the name doesn't give it away enough, Mr Arcellana is Filipino who was an AB English cum laude from UP Diliman (circa 70s if i remember it right) and who holds a Master's degree in Communication from Stanford University. When he was at Apple, he worked on Rhapsody which would later become what we now know as the Mac OS X, created the Apple Assistant (their "better" version of the Microsoft Wizard) and argued with Steve jobs (more on this later)

His credentials actually made me think: Did he really want to be a "user interface designer" when he made the academic decisions that he did, and in corollary, if one (looks around) wants to do what he's exactly doing now but is in the IT business, what is the pathway to enlightenment? (i wanted to ask this during the Q&A part but shyness got the better part of me)

Moving on, he did an excellent presentation on HCI, its principles, the processes involved in doing UI research and design, and a lot of other cool stuff (will be sharing those stuff with the team here in OCS). His Silicon valley anecdotes were my favorites though. He recalled arguing with Steve Jobs over the dock because he didn't think that it was a good idea. Of course Steve Jobs won, being the one with the "expert opinion". He said that during their argument he almost forgot that the one he's arguing with is his company's CEO.

It really sucked that we were not able get a video or photos for the event (angel left her camera in Tiwi), but it was one hell of a Lecture. The most enjoyable one I've ever been to, and the closest I would probably get to someone from the Mothership. :)

On a (minor) Blogger Design Flaw

I just noticed that if you have a single image (and no words) as a blog post (think post-secret), showing the "original post" in the comment form has no real value. You will just get a text that says "[photo]". What's that?
I think it will give more value to the readers if Blogger uses the alt attribute of the image posted instead of just sticking the word [photo] (which gives almost zero information). That way, bloggers who do this kind of blog posts will be encouraged to make use of the alternate text attribute to give more information for the readers. :)

In the end, commenting readers will be happier (saving a click on the back button to take a peak at the post again).

Until that's fixed, i would suggest the use of the pop-up version of the comment form.